Ancient theatre and performance culture around the black sea
- Submitting institution
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King's College London
- Unit of assessment
- 29 - Classics
- Output identifier
- 147052742
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1017/9781316756621
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN
- 9781107170599
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Ancient theatre in the Black Sea has never been investigated as an entity before. The idea arose while I researched my 2013 monograph on Euripides’ Iphigenia In Tauris and corresponded with eastern European colleagues about the theatre in Tauric Chersonesos. I invited David Braund (Black Sea Archaeology/History and speaker of Russian and Georgian) and Rosie Wyles (post-classical theatre performances and vase-painting) to join me and secured funding for our July 2014 KCL conference, attended by speakers from Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia. It was jeopardised by Russia’s annexation of Crimea (March 2014). I spent many hours telephoning embassies in the UK/Moscow/Kiev securing visas. Political tensions at the conference ran high; securing agreement to collaborate further from all speakers proved impossible, so I commissioned several new papers from in former Soviet-bloc colleagues to fill the conceptual and evidential gaps.
The volume required me to travel to conduct research in 2010 (Crimea/Olbia), 2015 (Sinope/Georgia) and 2016 (Bulgaria/Romania). Further challenges included the diversity of evidence (texts of tragedy, comic fragments, inscriptions, very new archaeological digs, vase-fragments, terracottas, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, literary evidence from Homer to early Byzantine sources) and of methodology. Editing the volume required a sustained effort to produce a consistent, cohesive and readable style throughout. I was responsible for the proposal sent to CUP and all correspondence with contributors except about the visual illustrations, for which Dr Wyles was responsible. I also contributed three sole-authored articles, on the evidence for theatrical activity along the southern coast of the Black Sea in Pontic Heraclea and Sinope, on the knowledge of the Phasis area rituals, produce, coinage and goldsmithery present in Euripides’ Medea, and the popularity of the Chersonite Parthenos temple in visual arts.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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